J said-What is this thing u call femme?

The Beginning...
What is this thing.. that you call femme???? Is it the conscious desire to please only men.. or to be attractive to everyone? What is this state of mind.. that you call femme? The willingness to obey and behave, or the power to control through silent sexual weaponry? What determines who…will be called femme? Is it me.. wearing my heels and stockings and makeup (when I have the time)…is it him sashaying down the street...with the jeans and the timb’s and the cap… but the hips are a little too sweet? Is it her…short hair…short nails…but face and figure of a goddess… or is it anyone…who doesn’t look manly… act manly..or talk manly….whether man or not. What is this…Attitude.. that says.. _you_ are femme…but she is not. *shrugs*


These little boxes that people insist on shoving me into are starting to rub me the wrong way. They are starting to aggravate my very delicate sense of balance. They are beginning to intrude on my peace of mind. I am not femme. *sighs* and I am not butch. I am simply… woman…female…not man. Anyway…this is Catharsis right? The purging of emotions... which I am finally ready for. To spill it all out… year after year... to see my shaping into me…


The first thing that I can remember, without the assistance of pictures or tales from my mother is hmmm.. my first house in D.C. We lived in southwest, and my preschool was right down the street..at least that is what I remember. We had a gorgeous tree outside of out back porch..and a highway behind us. I had my own room..and had pictures on the walls.. the usual .. ones of Grover and Oscar and Bert and Ernie (yeah.. I was a sesame street kid) I remember imitating my mother reading her school books and studying. I think that is what made me want to read as much as I do. The sight of her..my mommy.. the center of my world, poring over these books all the time, let me know that there must be something very valuable inside of them. We lived there for a long time.. and I remember my first and only Halloween party. I dressed up as Sylvester the cat.. but my costume was too big and I kept ripping over the legs of it. I remember walking to my preschool.. and walking under a rainbow. *smiles* I was quite frustrated because I couldn’t touch it..and when I got too close it faded away. Hm. I wonder if that was a portent of things to come. I remember slumber parties with my best friend..and wondering why she was so pretty…and kissing her. I remember nightmares from those same pictures on the walls… I remember the sunlight coming through the window shade that were so bright and yellow in felt like the sun was sitting right outside of the window…god I remember so much and yet so little…


I can next remember when I had to stay with my great aunt while my mother went to school. I wonder why she sent me to live with her.. because I was older then..Aunt J lived in a small town near Philly, and I went to school there…*smiles* I was ahead of all of the other children because I knew how to read so well. Even then I was a very ….completion conscious child. The only time that I got in trouble was when I slapped a little boy I was tutoring because he preferred to play around then learn his alphabet…I remember wearing dresses and a head piece all the time.. so I guess my mother had embraced Islam by then. And I remember falling a lot…*smiles* I remember dancing on my Aunt’s porch.. trying to be a ballerina…not because she was a ballerina..but because I wanted to be strong and graceful… I know I missed my mom.. but I loved my grandmom. Wow. That was before she retired.. because I could only stay with Gramma on the weekends because she was still working. And my Nana..remembered my name.. and my cousin was still in high school. I went back to live with my mom..after she graduated.. I suppose… and later… the year that I turned five… the most momentous thing that has ever happened to me occurred. My mother met A.


A,for the longest time would be the only man..the only male figure of any kind in my life. I can remember the first time I met him. We were at one of my mom’s friend’s houses, so that they could server as chaperones. We ate fried chicken, and he played with me. I was barely five, and I had a passion for outer space…and I still do, yet I have no clue where it came from. Anyhow, he played with me, making the teddy bear into an astronaut by putting an old plastic goldfish bowl over it’s head. I was in love. From that moment, I loved him. He was my Ab (Arabic for father) He was my guiding force in my life, the last word in everything, from who I would talk to, to what I could read. And I loved him.

The early years are fuzzy. I remember us moving to Boston, so that we could be closer to an Islamic community. I was thrilled. I had a new cat to play with, and we were leaving D.C. in a big ole truck.. I believe that was the beginning of my love and wanderlust…

We got into a wreck on the way up there…my mom tried to tell him to pull off and go to sleep.. but he wouldn’t listen. And since he was the man of the marriage…he was the last word..in that and in all other things. SO we kept driving.. and he drove us off the side of the road. I don’t really remember what happened…just that I lost my cat because it ran off…and that the truck was tilted crazy like off the side of the highway.


Somehow we made it to Boston. And for a while, we lived with the Imam’s family (Imam is along the lines of a Pastor). He had a huge family… when we moved there in…what was that ’83? They had 3 children I believe..but it felt like so many more. *sighs* I’m trying so hard to remember.. but I feel like my life was a blur…until I was around 14…. *smiles* that was when everything became interesting. The few tings I do remember from that time was the start of my home schooling.. learning Arabic and how to read the Q’uran. Memorizing verses, and sayings, and Hadiths. Reading compulsively anything that I could get my hands on..but that was years later. *sighs* We moved into our own place..where…I cannot remember….I guess we lived there for about 3 years..because I know that by the time I was 8, we had moved to Chester.


My great great grandfather had recently died (I remember the smell of pipe smoke and ollld whiskey from him) and left us a gorgeous house..not in the best of neighborhoods, but it was a house all the same. With a huge tree in the backyard, and a attic that had it’s own lil hidey closet..and enough rooms so that we each had one of our own. I think hat the time I spent there was the happiest. I learned like a sponge…soaking up everything that my mother taught me. And she taught so well that some of the other Muslim women sent their children to learn with us.


Where did I get my overwhelming interest and desire for sex from? *sighs* I don’t know. But I remember sneaking to read ‘Our New Baby Sister” and loving the pictures that showed just how the little girl was made. I remember having the WORST kind of crush on one o the little boys who came to the school. When I was eight was the last year that I went without glasses…8 was the year that I learned how to evade spankings by putting on every pair of draws that I owned.. 8 until ten kinda flew on by..and then they got divorced…and I can’t even remember why anymore. But we moved…

They were together… either in actuality or just with little breaks in between for ten years.

One day, very close to the end of that time, my mother and me had an entire day to ourselves. He had gone out, to work perhaps...but I don’t think he had a job at that time. We cooked, and cleaned, and talked, and did all of those mother daughter things, easily and with a sense of freedom. We weren’t under his gaze,we didn’t have to worry about conforming to his thoughts. I cooked that night, well we cooked actually. A wonderful dinner...lamb chops with garlic-mashed potatoes and fresh green beans. Biscuits and apple pie. I hadn’t eaten the entire day, and was so hungry...from the smell of the food and from the simple joy of being really happy.

Then he came home, and the entire house fell silent and tense…almost like even the cats knew that one could no longer be open and free and themselves. I was so nervous and upset I couldn’t eat. And the bitter awareness that the simple silent presence of this one person could ruin my entire day…my entire train of thought...the closeness me and my mother shared...that simple awareness turned my heart so cold…so miserably sad and hard… that I am quite sure that on that day... I stopped loving him.


I think that I started to despise him long before that…about a year or so. They had been through their second divorce... and he had returned. My mother and me had finally achieved some peace, she had a job as a nanny to three Arab children, and I assisted… tutored, read, and helped organize the mother’s office. The mother was in the US finishing a medical residency...and she was about to return to Saudi Arabia…she wanted to bring me and my mom along…to continue to take care of the children. It was hard to balance the incredible opportunity to see another culture for free, with the severe restrictions that simply living in Saudi Arabia would out in the both of us as single women. Then... another of my mother’s friends invited us to go on a tour of Pakistan that she was taking…with her husband and two sons. Who could be our escorts…we had the change of a lifetime… to go to another country for free… safely… with introductions to many families who lived there. But he came back into her life…and told her that he loooooved her… and that there was no one else for him… and she stayed. She stayed, and kept me here with her...and married him. For the third time... Then…I despised him…and her… and even more than that.. I began to hate this thing called love. What was it other than something that made you do stupid thing s that in your heart of hearts you KNOW is not for the best...simply to be ‘with’ this other person. That was when I learned that love hurts… it will make you cry scream and fuck up your entire life for an emotion… that can turn into hate in under 9 months.


That was how long it took. 9 months. Almost like a pregnancy… in reverse. Instead of ending in a new life...it ended with the total death of a relationship. I thank the gods it didn’t last any longer. I wonder if I would be still sane if it had. I remember I would hide in the attic… curled up in front of a sunny window… with my cat and a book...watching the people outside...making up names for them...and learning from them how people …real people lived. Sometimes I wished I was dead… or somewhere else…any where else. I loved my mother too much to run away…and I despised him too much to stay…so I became someone else…self-taught acting lessons. I smiled and laughed and joked and pretended nothing had changed. But ohhh…how I wished it could all be different. I wished him gone. I wished him dead. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house… unless I was with him… or unless I was running to the corner store for something. I think I started to decay... not physically but psychically. It was like all that I thought was me was squashed… not only words.. or even actions. But by emotions. By looks…by snide sly comments…by watching my mother hunker down into herself... watching him make this wonderful woman who managed to raise me... pull herself out of a shelter and into a wonderful good paying job... this woman who I knew was brilliant an intelligent and beautiful...be made to feel worthless and ugly because she didn’t get pregnant….while he blithely assumed that the problem was her. *snorts* SHE had a child…he never did.


Actually…the brightest day in my life wad the day that we packed the remains of our life into a Uhaul...and traveled up the highway to Chester. I think that day should have been remade my birthday… because before that... I wasn’t alive… I breathed… I grew...only physically…I was a 7 year old child as far as social skills went…in a 15 year old body. With a good dose of self hate and low self esteem tossed in for good measure.


I realized that it doesn’t really matter what happened between 5 and 15. I wasn’t really alive then. I was shaped like clay dough... and grew more withdrawn.


I think...and I pray…and I examine myself every day with the useless hope that all I brought from those years was extra weight…a fast and easy way to wash dishes…and a mile high brick wall around my emotional self…because if I brought anything more from him...I think that some of my hate that I have for him might began to rest on/in me…and I’m not strong enough for that…


And what makes this even sadder? Every once in a while he will track us down. Call us…and ask to talk to me. He still thinks that I love him. I guess he never understood how much I hated and feared him at the end. Why would he…children always loved him.



J.

J said - Changes

I’m exhilarated and depressed all at the same time. I don’t really like changes in my life, especially not changes that alter what I thought was unchangeable. Especially unchangeable friendships...Yeah, this is another entry about him. He sent me an e-birthday card, and I damn near cried when I saw it. Then I called him to thank him.. (breaking the promise I had made to myself to not contact him ‘til he contacted me.. but I guess he kinda did huh?) asked him how he was..and then out of nowhere he says that I’m as terrible liar. Huh? Where did that come from? *shrugs* I’m so tired, of trying to keep caring. I never thought that it would be something that he did that stomped those last few flames out… but hey.. I’m done… I’m officially DONE with him.


Nayway..the other change is that, I just realized that I have a true best friend. *grins* He is so close to me, yet I STILL haven’t seen him face to face…I know so much about him, yet I don’t really know what he looks like, or what his hair feels like, or how his faces changes when he smiles. Just yesterday I saw a sample of his handwriting and it hit me. The man knows more about the real me than anyone I have ever known, and we don’t really know each other. I might pass him in a crowd and not realize it until later. And yet, I still find out more and more about him every time we talk or ‘talk’ . *grins* the internet and computers are wonderful things..It’s funny, but I don’t even remember how we met anymore.. I know it was on a chat line, but what brought us together?? No clue…And besides that, he has given me the seed of an idea for a novel…finally... (and NO I’m not telling you what it’s about…you’ll get the first draft -J. )


So at the same time that I am drifting away from one friend, I am pulled closer to another... *smiles* hey... my life will hopefully ALWAYS be full of love.


Then, there is another friend whom I’m simply worried about. I think that he is making a majorly wrong move within his relationship, but who am I to try to tell him who to love and what to do with her?? *sighs* that is why I’m staying out of relationships.. and why I’m trying to keep all relationships that I have strictly on a mutual pleasure basis. I feel good… you feel good.. let’s keep it this way…I’m not ready for the whole..balancing his/her ego with mine thing. *shrugs* yes I’m young.. and yes I’m selfish..and dammit…I see nothing wrong with that. *laughs* as I told my momma yesterday… All I’m trying to do is Graduate.. get my car.. get my house..and get on with my life…*grins* I can even see myself having kids before I find that perfect mate…...perfect for me that is...…as Babyface and Mitchell said in B-Boy Blues (roughly paraphrased)


There are three kinds of men: Mr. Right. Mr. Wrong. And Mr. Right-For-Me. Mr. Right is a pipe dream.. he is rich, fine, intelligent, god fearing, unbelievably

honest, and can make you melt at a touch. Mr. Wrong is just that WRONG.. on drugs.. got another man or woman got issues demons or other troubles…yet you still mess with him until he breaks your heart..your wallet.. or your head... and then there is Mr. Right-For-Me. He may not be the finest person in the world.. or the richest.. or the smartest, but he treats me like a prince, and I love him and he loves me and we share some of the same goals and life paths.



What more can a woman ask for?? Anyhow…… once upon a time there was a point to this….but I’m rambling.. and trying to eat up time at work. Soo…..


I’m Out….


J.

J said - Happy Birthday To Me...again...

Okay,,this time it is for real..... I'm a little early cuz I wasn't born until 9:19 pm. but....




HAPPY BIRTHDAY J. YOU THE GIRL. AND YOU GETTING OLD!!!!!



Enough of that....I didn't realize it was my birthday until I got to work and saw the date on my phone. humph.

I don't really ahve anything to talk about... for once... except for my money problems... I wonder how long I can go without food so I can pay my bills?? I can afford to be a little smaller than what I am now....*shrugs* I'l figure out something...

*blows out candles and makes a wish*

J said - Men..among other thngs

Men crack me up sometimes… especially boyfriends. Now while at the current time, I am free as a bird, I have had enough bf’s to know of what I speak. My humor of the day is PMS. Me… personally.. it was never really a bad thing until about a year ago.. and I was quite upset. I’m usually a calm even keel kinda woman, so to have mood swings and other odd emotional upsets for no appetent reason was simply unnatural. But my b.f. of the time acted as though it was a personal insult to him..every time I was upset (righteously) quiet, sad, distant …anything but the cheery women he somehow expected me to be.. it was blamed on PMS…it irritated me, because he used it as an excuse for superiority.. *yeah me big man.. me no have emotions ahhhhhhhhhhhh* and of course this simply got worse when he was right, and I was actually going through that time. However, after about 4 months I got him to shut up.. when I calmly informed him that he should be thankful for the signs of PMS.. because that meant I wasn’t pregnant… *grins* I never heard another peep out of him.

Yeah.. I’m in the pregnancy tip…. *grins* I am a paranoid fool…. I had unprotected sex sometime ago.. *sighs* before I went home for break… he was clean (my ex) but….let me be a few days late and I get miserable.. upset..and afraid. I know what I would do… I have known for a while what I would do in the case of a pregnancy before I’m ready… and I have a definite list of things I need to have before I’m ready.

1) I have to own a reliable car
2) I need to have a reliable job
3) I reliable partner would be nice, but not VITAL
4) I have to have a home of my own…


Not much, but it’s enough…. I never want to have to get my big ole pregnant self on public transportation…. Or carry my baby on there. I never want to have to scrap for a cheap babysitter cuz I’m out of work and can’t go job-hunting with my baby. Nope.. that is agony that can be avoided.

But.. I’m an idiot all the same…. And every month.. I am overjoyed to receive the ‘curse’. Because it means that once again, I have triumphed over my own foolishness, my own bodies demands, and remained….not pregnant. And for some odd reason, I have never thought that I was infertile.. on the contrary I think that I am very fertile, and if I wanted to.. I could be pregnant in 2 or 4 months…. But… that ain’t gonna happen.

Two of my friends’ girlfriends have had abortions recently… well in the past year…and I always think…there… but for god’s grace..go I. One was a baby.. a freshman girl.. not even 18 yet…her parents were NOT amused….. the other was older.. around my age.. but she wasn’t ready either.. and god’s knows that neither of the fathers were ready to be daddies. And I wonder what it would be like if they had their children… would they still be in school?? Would they still be on the lifetrack they planned?




Tomorrow is my birthday.. so maybe that is why my thoughts have been focused on babies...little ones.. the children. But then again.. birth is a new beginning...and so many things are ending around me. Ah well… I’ll not be maudlin today….

J said - Adulthood/Happy Birthday to Me....

I don't feel like I'm anywhere near being 22. I still feel like I'm 18..young dumb and innocent. I mean, what makes you grown up??? having more bills than you can pay??? I've got that one down... being totally dependent on yourself... yeah.. I'm damn near close to that.. having a job? yup got that one...I mean what is the defining point?? when do you finally become an adult?? at marriage?? at the birth of your first child?? when?

And as this birthday approaches.. I think that it is the first one where I can say.. nothing will change... I won't feel any different.. I won't BE any different..

I’ll still be the same old J. going to work and coming home and doing all that regular stuff. It’s almost like… if something really interesting happened in my life, I could see me almost totally forgetting that it was my birthday….and dealing with something else…

Then I think about where my mommy as right now….she was in school...about to take her break…. Because she had me...right before she turned 23. Dear god.. I am so unprepared to have child right now… was she?? How did she deal with it??? Did she cry?? Did she consider abortion?? *shivers* It’s really odd thinking about what might have been… If I never was….. her and my father were together…so that was some support but still…

I still fell like a child.. and I have been out of the house for about as long as she was, and I have grown up in… well in today’s world…so I’m no wide eyed innocent, but still…. I can’t imagine…me…having a baby. Yet she had me, and raised me, and loved me….through all of the changes that life had put both of us through….my mommy was always there. And even now.. as I try to strike out on my own path...my own life…my mommy is still there…in the background yes...but still a support by my side.

I have never thought of this before…I wonder how I changed her life…where she would be without me…and would she ever have thought of me...as that baby who came too soon…would she have married A. ? would she have became Muslim? Hmmm.. one simple step…the simple lack of doing something...has changed us so much… that we wouldn’t recognize ourselves without the changes.

I wonder what my grandmother thought?? Was she happy? Was she upset?? How did she react to the fact that her baby girl was having a child of her own? I know my aunt was supportive…and my uncle too.


Lives change because of the introduction of something new… I am waiting for that change…waiting for that single moment that will forcibly catapult me from adolescence to adulthood. Maybe it will be graduation...maybe it will be getting my first car…but somehow.. I don’t think that it will be a birthday.